“There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions.”

And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.

A human person is infinitely precious and must be unconditionally protected.

For many people, the pope is still, to a certain extent, a positive role model and a moral force, although others feel that this aspect has suffered greatly.

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.

At the same time we are aware that our various religions and ethical traditions often offer very different bases for what is helpful and what is unhelpful for men and women, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.

Humanity today possesses sufficient economic, cultural and spiritual resources to introduce a better global order.

The Gospel has to be the norm.

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what “decreed” means.

If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.

But I have to add – and this answers your other question – this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God’s infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny.

All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.

Alluding to hell is a warning that a person can completely neglect his purpose in life. I don’t believe in an eternal hell.

However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights.

A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself.

Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.

Healthy feet can feel the very heart of Mother Earth.

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.

My friends they were dancing here in the streets of Huntsville when our first satellite orbited the Earth. They were dancing again when the first Americans landed on the Moon. I’d like to ask you, don’t hang up your dancing slippers.

It must be, for there is a logic to everything on this earth and nothing is done without a reason, that God sometimes lets scientists discover.

Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth will cause tremors around the New City. Two great rocks will war for a long time, then Arethusa will redden a new river.

That perfect bliss and sole felicity, the sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

But it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker – may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!

If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting if you can dream, and not make dreams your master; if you can think, and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same; yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.